While SS simply lounged somewhere awaiting for the pre-arranged appointment with Dr. Paul Cases to check on some throat discomforts a chicken bone splinter has pricked while dining in a Molave City eatery with the family and some Aimie staffers in early July where we motored off to attend the Pres. Duterte mass induction of barangay officials, confident there was an advance sent-in writeup, it was only today SS came to know his article was missing.

A grand miscalculation. Sorry.

Hey, the previous day KingKong jubilee must have gotten the better of me. There was neither an SS entry on my timeline yesterday. The oversight was nary a bit on the Cases checkup ahead. I am very confident Dr. Paul will definitely have a solution to my throat’s tingling pain, as it did turn out that way. A simple prescription of affordable meds is doing the trick. Thanks, Doc.

I attribute, nay blame, that absence of mind to the KingKong creation of a celebration.

X x x x X

Mayor Beng Climaco drumbeaters trumpet that she continues to work hard for the welfare of her constituents and progress of Zamboanga City and vows to introduce more pro-poor programs and infrastructure projects for the benefit of all.

But comebacking Mayor Celso Lobregat says otherwise, he even started spewing dragon-like fire, as his latest statement shows, “This is a shameless and scandalous budget.”

This we further wrote, “Thus, breathed Lobregat from his nostrils in reaction to the 2019 city budget Mayor Beng Climaco hatched and approved last Friday by councilors belonging to the yellow-turned-pink team."

"Lobregat noted the present administration’s budget for next year is concentrated on purchases, with allocations of a very small percentage of the budget to infrastructure like road widening, school buildings and pro-poor programs, if ever."

"Of the total P4.1 billion Executive Budget for next year, a little more than a billion pesos of it will go to purchase alone of new garbage and dump trucks, other motor vehicles, watercrafts, fire trucks, commercial buses and drones."

Shortening his dissertation, he continued, from the existing 25 garbage trucks under the control of the city government plus 14 units not yet purchased, there are still 51 more garbage trucks and 44 more dumptrucks to be purchased. There will then be 134 trucks to collect the garbage of the city. It’s a lot of waste of people’s money. That huge amount can help more indigent Zamboangeños in the form of social services rather than for going to purchases of vehicles.

And he observed, Tumaga has a brand new garbage truck that costs only P1.250 million. "Compare this to that of the City Government which costs P5 million per unit. It is a one is to four ratio." Lobregat said.

Habla pa.

“On this vehicle purchases alone, we can see that this is a re-election budget, not a people-oriented budget. Bien sobra-sobra el presyo, terrible.

Mayor Celso, you hit nail right on its head, “this is a re-election budget, not a people-oriented budget.”